Soil to Oil Phase V: Processing & Bottling

We’re finally here. The launch of our 2022 vintage is upon us.

From sowing seeds to harvesting beautifully grown flowers, the cycle has led up to this point.

In one way, this journey is extremely exciting. In another way, it’s daunting. Creating essential oil at this scale is no easy task, and we’re not impervious to the whims of mother nature. Fortunately, the season’s weather conditions allowed us to move with a precision that has crafted our most consistent vintage to date.

Steam distillation of Essential Oil: A Secret of the Ages

Immediately after our cannabis plants were harvested, processing began. We don’t harvest a day’s worth of plants then transport. We don’t harvest the whole crop and send it to a freezer. We harvest a few rows at a time and then make oil immediately. Our methods are carefully designed to maintain the integrity of the plant and preserve the California terroir. Our methods allow the oils to express the seasonal nuances of the vintage.

Steam distillation is a delicate and time sensitive process that vaporizes the plant’s most volatile compounds. These compounds then go through a condensation and collection process.

Here’s precisely how it works:

1. A still — a large vessel made of stainless steel — is loaded with the plant material. Steam is injected into the still through an inlet, releasing the plant’s aromatic molecules and turning them into vapor.
2. The vaporized plant compounds travel to a condenser, where cold stainless steel pipes cool the vapor allowing the desired compounds to condense and drop into the next phase.
3. The desired aromatics and undesired hydrosol from the condensation flask collect inside a separation vessel. The essential oil then floats on top of the water. Simple as can be ????

Refining for every drop we create

Refining the oil is our special trade secret, but we can tell you it’s an ISO 9001 process that’s repeated the same way for every drop of oil we create.

Some oils make the cut, and some don’t. Their fate is the result of a rigorous quality evaluation process that marries art with science. Some chromatograms from our in-house analytical team are used, and some hyper advanced proprietary sensory processes driven by olfactory and gustatory analysis (the ????and the ????). We, a team with countless years of cannabis manufacturing experience, meticulously smell and taste test each oil to determine if the TBF quality standard is met.

And with this, we present you with the 2022 Vintage of Fresh Never Frozen®, which is now available to the public.

See every phase of the Soil to Oil journey.